○  truth and tolerance in america  ○

chance of war. i do not believe that, but it surely does not violate the standard of fair public debate to say it. what does violate that standard, what the opponents of the nuclear freeze have no right to do, is to assume that they are infallible, and so any argument against the freeze will do, whether it is false or true.

the nuclear freeze proposal is not unilateral, but bilateral -- with equal restraints on the united states and the soviet union. the nuclear freeze does not require that we trust the russians, but demands full and effective verification. the nuclear freeze does not concede a soviet lead in nuclear weapons, but recognizes that human beings in each great power already have in their fallible hands the overwhelming capacity to remake into a pile of radioactive rubble the earth which god has made.

there is no morality in the mushroom cloud. the black rain of nuclear ashes will fall alike on the just and the unjust. and then it will be too late to wish that we had done the real work of this atomic age -- which is to seek a world that is neither red nor dead.

i am perfectly prepared to debate the nuclear freeze on policy grounds, or moral ones. but we should not be forced to discuss phantom issues or false charges. they only deflect us form the urgent task of deciding how best to prevent a planet divided from becoming a planet destroyed.

and it does not advance the debate to contend that the arms race is more divine punishment than human problem, or that in any event, the final days are near. as pope john said two decades ago, at the opening of the second vatican council: “we must beware of those who burn with zeal, but are not endowed with much sense... we must disagree with the prophets of doom, who are always forecasting disasters, as though the end of the earth was at hand.” the message which echoes across the years is very clear: the earth is still here; and if we wish to keep it, a prophecy of doom is no alternative to a

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